Legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin said Wednesday he thinks Aileen Cannon, the federal judge presiding over former President Trump’s classified documents case, is “trying to kill this prosecution.”
Toobin criticized Cannon for her recent decision to let third parties argue in a June 21 hearing on Trump’s motion to dismiss the indictment on grounds that special counsel Jack Smith, who brought the charges against Trump, was illegally appointed to the job.
“This whole way she has conducted this case is wildly, totally, crazily unusual,” Toobin said during a discussion on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360.”
“And the allowing of outsiders to participate in a day-and-a-half hearing that most judges would decide on briefs, or maybe give 10 minutes aside to argue, is just another illustration that she is trying to kill this prosecution.”
“That’s the only conclusion you can draw,” Toobin continued. “No other judge in the federal system that I’m aware of would treat these issues anything like what she’s trying to do.”
Trump faces 40 federal criminal charges in Florida related to his mishandling of White House records after he left office and his efforts to obstruct the government from retrieving them.
The files allegedly contained classified national defense and weapons information, including some top-secret documents.
In early May, Cannon indefinitely postponed the trial, delaying some court dates into late July and declining to set a trial date.
She issued the postponement order less than two weeks before the trial was set to begin on May 20, citing the need to resolve numerous issues.
In a separate case, Trump was found guilty late last month on 34 federal counts of falsifying business records in a scheme to cover up hush money payments made to shield potentially damaging information from the American public ahead of the 2016 presidential election. Trump has pledged to appeal the case.
Trump was indicted in two additional criminal cases, both related to his efforts to remain in power after losing the presidential election in 2020. The cases — one federal and one in Georgia — have both met delays that make them unlikely to head to trial ahead of the November election.